


Light Goes Out

by sunshineflying



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-16 01:45:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14153988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshineflying/pseuds/sunshineflying
Summary: Kylo Ren feels the loss of his mother through the Force, and through his bond with Rey. Her grief is nearly unbearable, and with her heartache, the bond is reignited.Basically some sad, fluffy hurt/comfort of Rey (and subsequently Kylo) reacting to the news that General Leia Organa has passed.





	Light Goes Out

**Author's Note:**

> This is a piece that's been sitting in my Google Docs for weeks. It's nothing huge, but I do feel proud of how it turned out.
> 
> Unbeta'd, so all mistakes are my own.

Kylo feels it before anyone ever has to tell him.

The Force quivers inside of him, alerting him that a life is gone. An important one. Just as a little flicker of light and hope in his chest was plunged into darkness by the work of his own lightsaber years before, now the same happens. This time it’s more monumental, though. The ache is there, the same one he felt when he’d killed his father, but curiously magnified. Like a whole piece of his soul was ripped from his chest and twisted and snarled to render his pain almost unbearable.

That was Rey.

Ever since Snoke had bridged their minds before his death, the two still remained connected. Most of the time, it was only through feeling, through emotion. They never saw each other. The desire or power was never strong enough within them. She’d abandoned him on Crait, looking at him with such pity and disdain that Kylo couldn’t bear to look  _ himself _ in the eyes. All mirrors were gone from his quarters. 

He was the Supreme Leader, but he was so painstakingly alone.

As much as he may try to make it so, Kylo Ren had learned that power was no replacement for love or family. Power just intensified the feelings he’d already felt of loneliness, of solitude. Those feelings that nobody would see him as he truly was - that he was just a silly child in a mask. That he wasn’t worth saving, worth the time of day.

At least nobody pitied him when the news began to circulate of General Leia Organa’s death. When Hux delivered the news, he’d been trying hard not to visibly cower. It was impossible to predict how the Supreme Leader would react to the news. Kylo kept his grip on Hux’s neck until Hux began turning blue in the face. He hasn’t shown himself since.

The first time Kylo sees Rey since they’d parted ways on Crait, it’s the middle of the night.

He wakes in his chambers, his first instinct one of fear, of defensiveness, when he hears someone else. Nobody else should have access to his chambers. Kylo tunes into his senses, into the Force, to try to figure out who or what has entered his rooms.

Soft sobs echo from nearby.

When he opens his eyes, Rey appears to be right there next to him, perched on the edge of his bed - or her bed, wherever she is. Her elbows balance on her knees and her hands cover her face. Loose tendrils of hair that hasn’t been washed in days fall in ugly, ratted strands around her face, hiding her from his view. Even though her back is to him, he knows without a doubt that it’s Rey.

As he turns to his side to face her fully, the rustling of blankets alerts her to his presence. 

“Oh.”

She dabs at her face pitifully, not even bothering to put a scowl on her face, to try to be defensive. Rey is too exhausted to try to be someone she’s not. “I’m sorry,” she mutters. “I don’t know how this works. I thought - since Snoke -”

“So did I.”

Rey keeps her back to Kylo. Her heart is broken, shattered, knowing that the only people she looked up to as parents were now dead. Han, Luke, and now Leia… Rey is left alone once more. It leaves her feeling emptier than she ever felt on Jakku, waiting with a false hope that someone was coming back for her.

“Whatever this connection was meant for - the Force doesn’t want it to be over yet,” he says.

Rey sniffles and shifts on the edge of his bed. He sees now that she’s in different clothing than he usually sees her in. She’s wearing a black shirt - one that looks suspiciously like standard issue blacks that go under white Stormtrooper armor - and black leggings. “Look - that’s… good to know, but…” Rey sniffles again. “I don’t really care about that right now.”

Kylo is quiet and sits up in bed. He’s not wearing a shirt - he never does when he sleeps - but she doesn’t take notice this time.

“You’re mourning my mother,” he observes.

Rey doesn’t dignify that with a response.

The silence in the room goes on for minutes, nothing but the sound of their breathing to remind them that they’re not alone. 

“How did she die?”

Rey is quiet for a moment before turning to look over her shoulder. It’s not what she’d expected to hear him say, but something about his question makes her feel better about this connection of theirs. Even still, after she’d abandoned him after the Battle of Crait, there is Light in him.

“The primary medic says it was natural,” Rey replies. “She went to sleep one evening and never woke up. They say she didn’t feel any pain.”

Kylo nods. “That’s good.”

Rey studies him in the darkness, the sharp angles of his face looking shockingly soft as they talk about his mother in the shadows. “I think she knew it was going to happen,” Rey explains, her gaze drifting off to the distance, somewhere over his shoulder. Her voice is soft, a bit raw and hoarse from crying. “Just two days before, she told me something. Something very important.”

Desperately, with every fiber of his being, Kylo finds that he wants desperately to know what his mother had said. Like she’s reading his mind, Rey tells him without hesitation.

“She told me to tell you that she’s sorry. And that she loves you.”

Rey brings her eyes back to meet Kylo’s. There’s emotion shining in them, betraying his carefully schooled neutral expression. “You’re lying,” he says, though his voice lacks conviction.

“No,” Rey shakes her head. “I - can I show you the memory.”

Kylo shakes his head. He’s not certain he could handle watching his mother utter the words Rey says she did. It would be too much for him, after everything he’s done, the lives he’s taken. It’s better to just say no, for now. Maybe he’ll have the strength one day.

Rey looks crestfallen and turns to face away from him once more. “Alright,” she says softly. “Well - she said it. Whether you believe it or not.”

“Why would she say such a thing about me?” he asks.

Rey opens her mouth, but then her head looks up sharply, as though someone were knocking on the door to her quarters, and she disappears.

\---

The next time they see each other, Kylo is pulled from brooding in his quarters to stand in the middle of beautiful fields of green. He’d had a terrible day, watching Hux destroy another meaningless planet. At this point, Kylo doesn’t even feel the lives ending through the Force, as he once did. No, he was brooding because he’d seen a flash of something - of Rey, standing over his mother’s body as they prepared for her funeral - and that was unexpected and painful.

And now he stands in a grassy knoll, at the edge of a crowd, his cowl blowing in the wind. Rey stands at his side, all by herself.

As he looks at her, taking in the sight of her, he realizes that she looks beautiful in the sunlight, yet it seems so ill-suited to her mood - the silent tears drifting down her cheeks. Kylo realizes in that moment that he often sees her crying. He doesn’t know what her smile looks like. He yearns to see her expression light up, to see joy rather than sadness cross her face.

But now she stands heartbroken in a field, the Resistance in a crowd to her right, Kylo standing still to her left. “Can they see me?” he asks.

“No,” Rey says softly. She doesn’t hesitate. She must have known he’d be there.

Curiously, he asks, “Did you summon me here?”

Rey is quiet. She doesn’t move, tunes out the words as someone says kind things about Leia. The whole crowd is in various states of sadness and mourning, but Rey’s melancholy is far more intense in her heart than on her face. Kylo can feel it.

Or maybe it’s his own sadness. It’s a foreign feeling, one he’s rarely experienced.

“Maybe,” she whispers. “I don’t know.” She doesn’t dare look over at him, for fear of looking crazy in front of this ragtag crowd of what’s left of the Resistance. “I just… thought to myself that you should be here. That you shouldn’t miss something like this. And then there you were.”

“I shouldn’t be here,” he replies.

Rey sniffles. “It’s what she would have wanted,” she says lamely. “She wanted her son to come home.”

“This isn’t my home, Rey,” Kylo says flatly. “I’m not even really here.”

A sob racks her body and her shoulders tremble as a few tears fall down her cheeks. Kylo keeps his eyes trained on her, sensing that his mother isn’t the only reason he’s here. “I wasn’t lying about how you got here. I thought that -”

“That she’d want me here, or that you needed me here?”

Rey is quiet. She takes a deep breath and he sees her brow furrow. She’s trying so hard to seem less easy to read, but it’s impossible. Rey is an open book, especially in her immeasurable grief. Finally, she lets out a steadying breath and shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“Yes you do,” Kylo responds.

Rey sighs and her breath comes out shaky and uncertain. She looks at the rest of the Resistance, the friends and couples all holding hands, comforting each other through their mourning. Rey stands alone. She’d spent so much time with Luke that aside from Finn, she hadn’t truly made any friends within the Resistance. And Finn was unabashedly holding Poe’s hand, the two of them clinging to each other in their sadness.

Even with the people who are meant to be  _ her _ people, she feels so alone. 

“Fine,” Rey whispers. “Both?” Frowning, unsure of whether she should admit it, she adds, “The second one, mostly.” She’d needed him. Desperately.

Kylo is quiet, surprised by her candor. Rey turns her focus back to the ceremony, watching as Leia is lowered into the ground. Tears slide down Rey’s cheeks once more, silent sobs shaking her body as she watches the closest thing she ever had to a mother disappear forever.

Gently, Kylo steps closer to her on the grassy knoll. Subtly, in a way that shouldn’t arise suspicion in anyone around her, Kylo takes Rey’s hand in his own. Instantly, she squeezes his hand, taking in his strength, his warmth, as best she can. It stops his breath for a moment. 

Even in her grief, Rey is strong and powerful with the Force. She leeches any strength he has to try to stay upright and put together, to push back the sobs threatening to break free. 

Leia was the closest thing to a loving parent Rey had ever had. They didn’t get enough time together. There was nobody left for Rey, now.

Except that absence in her chest feels a little less overwhelming as he holds her hand, shares in her burden. Rey steps closer to him still, letting his warmth wash over her as the wind whips through the knoll on Takodana. “I’m sorry you didn’t get more time with her,” Kylo says to Rey, her pain and anguish too much for him  _ not _ to say something. Rey feels his honesty, knows that he means it. He understands that Leia, while perhaps not the woman  _ he _ needed, was the woman that  _ Rey _ needed.

“It’s okay,” Rey whispers, sniffling. “At least I got something.”

Fleetingly, before realizing what it means, Kylo thinks to himself that Rey deserves much better than the galaxy has given her. Much, much better.

And now, he wants to give it to her. The whole galaxy and everything in it. And even still, that won’t be enough. She’d deserve even better than that, if it exists.

It didn’t work the first time, but he’ll ask again and again until she finally,  _ finally _ says yes.

**Author's Note:**

> Leave me a comment or come say hello at reyssolo.tumblr.com <3


End file.
